Early Help for families

 Introduction  

All agencies that work with children, young  people and families are responsible for listening  to your concerns and worries and working  closely with you to make sure you and your  family get the right support at the right time. At times children and families need a bit of  extra support – and when that happens, it’s  ok to ask for help.  

Early help is there to make sure worries don’t  become bigger and you get the support you  need at the right time. You may have found out  about how early help can make a difference  from a teacher, health visitor, midwife,  school health nurse, early years practitioner,  doctor, voluntary worker or another trusted  professional already working with you.  Early help brings together all the relevant  services in Oxfordshire so they are working in a  co-ordinated way to support families. 

There are lots of different reasons you might  need early help: 

• You could be worried about your own  or your child’s health, development or  behaviour, or how things are going at school  or nursery.  
• You could be caring for others, or maybe  you’ve had a bereavement in the family, and  it’s made life a real challenge.  
• It may be that you’re worried about money  or housing and how it’s affecting your family. 
•  Maybe you or your family are affected by  domestic abuse, mental health, drugs,  alcohol or crime. 

What’s involved?  

You’ve already taken a big first step  by asking for help. Now we can work  with you, your family and all the  agencies who are here to support you  in Oxfordshire to take the next one. 

Step 1  Get the support of a trusted professional to  help you. This is important. They will help you  explore what’s going well and any difficulties  you and your family may be experiencing.  They might suggest using the strengths and  needs tool to help figure out what help is  needed. This is just a record of what you  talked about, so that the right support can be  provided.  You will agree together what is written on it.  Completing it means if you require support  from other professionals, it will help them  understand how they can help, without you  having to repeat yourself.  It is important that your children get their say.  So, once you’ve given the ok, together with the  person supporting you, you can decide who  will speak to your children. 

 Step 2  Using strengths and needs, you may be able to  put together a plan which can help to support  any needs you have. If this is the case, you may  not need to do anything else. 

 Step 3  If you need advice from other professionals,  your trusted person, with your permission, can  also speak to people in other organisations and  share the information you’ve provided. They will  then pull together a team of people who can  provide the advice and support you need.  

Step 4  You may all meet to talk through what needs to  happen next. This is called a team around the  family meeting and together you’ll find ways to  solve any of the support needs you have.  The important thing is they all come together to  make what could be a big worry easier to solve. 

What’s involved in a team around  the family meeting? 

 Step 1  To make sure you get the right people involved,  your team around the family will be personal  to your needs. Yours could involve friends and  family including your children, but also other  people who are already a part of your life such  a teacher, health visitor, midwife, school health  nurse, early years practitioner or doctor.  It’s important that your children have their say.   If appropriate your child(ren) can be invited to  the team around the family meeting or their  views could be included in the meeting without  them needing to be there. 

 Step 2  You may meet them all to talk through what  could be done to help you. This could be done  physically or virtually.  This first meeting together is to go through  your strengths and needs which sets out the  worries you have.  

Step 3  Once everyone knows the situation, the team  supporting you will then develop a plan with  you, to work out how everyone together can  solve the problems you have raised that you  and your children need help with. It could be  a mixture of different things are needed.  

Step 4  The team around the family will also identify  who your lead professional will be going  forward. Once your plan is in place, they will  help you keep track of how you are doing. If  they need to involve others, they will do. But  only with your agreement. 

We’re committed to giving you  the best possible advice  If the lead professional requires additional  advice and support, they can contact the  Locality Community Support Service  (LCSS) whose role is to support the early help  process, offering guidance and advice to those  professionals working with you.   This can start as soon as you or the  professionals working with you identify  that early help may be of benefit to you  and your family.  They can help in different ways:  If they need advice on who to ask for specific  types of support – LCSS can save them time  by pointing them in the right direction.  They may need some guidance on how to  complete the paperwork that is done with  you to work out what you need – LCSS  can support them, so you get the most  out of your time with your trusted/lead  professional.  Sometimes team around the family  meetings may need more support to find  solutions to meet the needs of your family –  LCSS can attend to help with this. 

What happens to the information  that is collected about me?  

Any information about you can be shared  with all those working with you and with  your agreement.  All early help paperwork (strengths and needs  team around the family meeting minutes)  is sent to the Locality Community Support  Service, who support early help processes in  Oxfordshire. We will treat your information as  confidential and won’t share it with any other  organisation unless we are required by law or  you or any person will come to some harm if  we do not. In this case we will only ever share  the minimum information needed. All personal  information will be processed and stored in  compliance with the Data Protection Act.  

For more information please visit: https://  www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/residents/childreneducation-and-families/childrens-services/integrated-childrens-services/early-helpprivacy-notice 

Contact details:  LCSS@oxfordshire.gov.uk  0345 2412 705 

(Early help guide for parents -  Early-help-guide-for-families-Sept-2023.pdf (oscb.org.uk) )